Home Tag Archives: Sonny Boy Williamson

Tag Archives: Sonny Boy Williamson

James Cotton: Super Harp

James Cotton at the Hondarribia Blues Festival, July 2008

James Cotton was born into a Mississippi farming family in the middle of the summer, 1935. As the youngest of eight children, his prospects in the Tunica cotton fields held few opportunities beyond hauling water buckets for laborers or endless hours on a plantation tractor seat in the sweltering Delta sun.

Runnin’ with the Tomcat: Tomcat Courtney

Tomcat Courtney at a regular weekly gig

How does a person earn the nickname, Tomcat? The story goes that a girlfriend of Courtney’s in Waco, TX, who ran a little house out on the range, had just bought him a Cadillac. One day she got angry with him and chased him through the house with an axe! Yes, I said Axe! He jumped out one of the …